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All Politics are Local

House Committee Passes Redistricting Maps

The House State Government committee has advanced a new redistricting map to the House floor after weeks of closed door debate. Last year's state House and Senate districts were ruled unconstitutional by the Kentucky Supreme Court after House GOP members challenged them in court. The new House districts would create seven new districts all across Kentucky, where no current lawmakers reside.

Credit Kentucky General Assembly

Those districts are:

House District 1 -- Fulton, Hickman Carlisle and Ballard counties, with parts of Graves County.

House District 19 -- Warren County/Bowling Green

District 36 -- East Louisville

District 49 -- Bullitt County

District 54 -- Anderson, Shelby and part of Bullitt county

District 88 -- Fayette County/Lexington

District 96 -- Powell, Estill and part of Madison county.

And it put a total of 13 incumbents into a race with at least one other incumbent, in six districts. Of those races, 12 of the 13 incumbents will be GOP members facing off against each other, should they decide to run.

The map does not include federal prisons in the numbers, which House GOP Leader Jeff Hoover argues is to help Democrats hold onto control since those prisoners were used when Congressional districts were re-drawn last year.

"If we don't count them, it makes it a little easier to hold onto power, we're not gonna count them in the state plan, I think there's something very inconsistently and inherently very wrong with that," Hoover says.

But Democrats made the point that many other states don't include federal prisoners in their state level redistricting maps and say their map is constitutional.